Summary
➡ The speaker discusses the importance and complexity of symbols, focusing on the dot as a basic symbol that represents existence or non-existence. They also delve into the concept of center symbolism, where the center is seen as the point from which everything emanates and returns to. The speaker further explores how ancient cultures revered the center, often symbolized by a world tree or a standing stone, as a sacred point of their region. They conclude by mentioning the emperor card in tarot, where the emperor is often depicted sitting on a cubic stone, symbolizing a central point.
➡ The speaker discusses various conspiracy theories and beliefs, including the idea that the moon is closer than we think and possibly brought here by a god. They also believe that the earth is stationary and the stars spin above us. They express skepticism about the moon, suggesting it has cooling light and may not be trustworthy. They also discuss cryptids, expressing belief in Bigfoot and Dogman, but uncertainty about Mothman.
➡ The text discusses various conspiracy theories, including the belief that 9/11 was an inside job and the existence of government mind control programs. The speaker also shares personal experiences with Fritz Springmeier, an author known for his work on these theories. They delve into the concept of ‘Project Monarch’ and ‘Project Montauk’, which involve mind control and astral projection respectively. The speaker believes in the possibility of these theories, citing personal experiences with remote viewing and the potential for mind control in everyday situations.
➡ The text discusses various conspiracy theories and beliefs, including Project Monarch, Project Montauk, and the Philadelphia experiment. It also delves into the concept of super soldiers, who claim to have extraordinary abilities due to trauma-based mind control. The author expresses skepticism towards the secret space program, but believes in the existence of super soldiers and the possibility of lost technology. The text ends with the idea of a northern origin for humanity, suggesting that ancient cultures revered the northern sky more than the sun.
➡ The text discusses the evolution of ancient Chinese astrology from focusing on the northern sky to the path of the sun, resulting in a twelve-constellation zodiac. It also introduces John Major Jenkins, who has done extensive research on this topic. The author shares his work on symbolicstudies.com and Patreon, where he explores the major Arcana in tarot. The text ends with a promotion for paranoidamerican.com, which offers conspiracy-themed products.
➡ This text seems to express a struggle with negativity and conflict, possibly in a competitive environment. The speaker feels misunderstood and judged, but remains defiant, continuing their actions despite the criticism. They also express a desire for peace and understanding.
➡ This text discusses the symbolic significance of shapes and symbols in different cultures, such as the central stone or column that people revolve around in various religious practices. It also explores the concept of perfection in shapes, arguing that perfect circles or cubes don’t exist in reality, but only in theory. The text suggests that symbols might have inherent power or resonance, and that the world of symbols might precede the physical world. It also raises questions about how blind people perceive symbols and whether they can be affected by them.
➡ The text discusses the power and interpretation of symbols, questioning if they have an objective truth or if their meaning is based on cultural and educational contexts. It explores how symbols can evoke different reactions in different cultures, like the color red or the image of a snake. The text also delves into the use of symbols in marketing and branding, suggesting that while some brands may encode messages in their logos, the idea that purchasing such products could result in losing part of one’s soul is likely exaggerated. The conversation concludes by acknowledging the enduring power of symbols and myths throughout history.
➡ The text discusses the power and influence of symbolism, particularly in myths and design. It suggests that symbols and myths, refined over generations, carry potent meanings and lessons that resonate with people. The author shares personal experiences of incorporating symbols into design work, noting that these designs often resonated with clients. The text also explores the idea of intentional and unintentional symbolism in art and media, using Stanley Kubrick’s films as an example, and suggests that sometimes, the universe might play a role in adding layers of meaning to a project.
➡ The text discusses the concept of synchronicities, or meaningful coincidences, and how they might play a role in our lives and in art, such as in Stanley Kubrick’s films. It also explores the idea of Kubrick being a conduit for a team of creators, and questions how much credit he should receive for the work. The text delves into the symbolism in Kubrick’s film “The Shining”, particularly the Minotaur and Taurus symbolism, and the potential connections to the zodiac and the star Aldebaran. It ends with a discussion on whether these symbols were intentionally placed or are simply interpretations by the audience.
➡ The text discusses various interpretations and theories about the symbolism in Stanley Kubrick’s films, particularly “The Shining”. It suggests that the film might imply a gateway to hell, and highlights the recurring theme of doors. The text also mentions a theory that the signing of the Declaration of Independence was timed with the rising of Aldebaran, a star. Lastly, it shares a personal story about visiting the real-life location that inspired the hotel in “The Shining”, and speculates about Kubrick’s possible involvement in the 9/11 events.
➡ The text discusses the personality and work approach of a certain individual, possibly a director, who is seen as a part of the system rather than a rebel. He is described as someone who doesn’t like to travel, listens to air traffic control in his free time, and uses near-miss incidents as a reason not to fly. The text also suggests that he might have been involved in directing the moon landings, and discusses the possibility of him leaving clues about this in his work. The individual is compared to Chris Nolan and Stanley Kubrick, and the text explores the idea of directors creating propaganda pieces for the system in order to do personal projects.
➡ The text discusses a filmmaker’s unique approach to directing, which involves pushing actors to their limits to elicit genuine reactions. This method, while controversial, often results in award-winning performances. However, some critics argue that his films lack warmth and humanity, reflecting a possible trend towards a more robotic society as technology advances. The filmmaker’s intense and sometimes harsh directing style has sparked debates about the ethical boundaries in the pursuit of artistic excellence.
➡ The text discusses Stanley Kubrick, a renowned film director, and his relationships with actors and colleagues. Some felt hurt when he didn’t maintain contact after filming, while others admired his intelligence and independence. The text also explores theories about Kubrick’s knowledge of secret information, such as the MKUltra program, and his potential involvement in the moon landing. Lastly, it discusses Kubrick’s decision to leave Hollywood and work exclusively in England, and his potential role in shaping public perception of space travel.
Transcript
Have you ever felt the pull of the unanswered, the allure of the mysteries that shroud our existence? For more than a decade, a unique comic publisher has dared to dive into these mysteries, unafraid of the secrets they might uncover. This audacious entity is paranoid American. Welcome to the mystifying universe of the paranoid american podcast. Launched in the year 2012, Paranoid American has been on a mission to decipher the encrypted secrets of our world. From the unnerving enigma of mkultra mind control, to the clandestine assemblies of secret societies, from the awe inspiring frontiers of forbidden technology, to the arcane patterns of occult symbols in our very own pop culture, they have committed to unveiling the concealed realities that lie just beneath the surface.
Join us as we navigate these intricate landscapes, decoding the hidden scripts of our society and challenging the accepted perceptions of reality. Folks, I’ve got a big problem on my hands. There’s a company called paranoid American making all these funny memes and comics. Now, I’m a fair guy. I believe in free speech, as long as it doesn’t cross the line. And if these AI generated memes dare to make fun of me. They’re crossing the line. This is your expedition into the realm of the extraordinary, the secret, the shrouded. Come with us as we sift through the world’s grand mysteries, question the standardized narratives, and brave the cryptic labyrinth of the concealed truth.
So strap yourselves in, broaden your horizons, and steel yourselves for a voyage into the enigmatic heart of the paranoid american podcast, where each story, every image, every revelation brings us one step closer to the elusive truth. Paranoid american podcast. Today we’ve got Mario from symbolic studies, who I think we’ve done a few different shows together in the past, but now you’re in my world. So get prepared, sir, because we’re going to put you into the hot seat. So I hope you’ve brought your a game today. And so, well, actually, let me first preface. If no one knows who Mario or symbolic studies are tell people where they can find you and do all your plugs up front so we can get into this.
Yeah, for sure. So my project, symbolic studies, the best place to find everything is symbolicstudies.com dot. I like to follow each astrological sign during the sign itself and produce content based around that. Ive been doing that for a number of years now and so if youre interested in that sort of thing, I have an Instagram and YouTube and Twitter and all that fun stuff, but symbolicstudies.com, thats the easiest place to find all my links. Look at that, man. You’ve got that down to like a nice little short clip, a true pro, an absolute professional. And you’ve been doing this for a while.
I’m still like a baby in this entire space. But I’m just curious, when you started to where you’re at now, what’s the delta? What’s the biggest thing that’s changed in Mario from day one, I guess. When was day one? When did you start doing symbolic studies or even taking seriously and putting your name out there? Right, right. I would say 2020 was when I started putting out videos and things like that. But I had ideas for a podcast and for a website many years before that. And to be honest with you, I really wanted to do more conspiratorial content and I wanted to kind of have a show like higher side chats or something like that.
And there was so much wild information that I was interested in at the time that I didn’t know if that was a good idea because of how controversial some of the topics I wanted to get into were. And over the years, I found myself really getting interested in symbolism. And so I thought that was kind of like almost like a happy sort of compromise in a way, where I’m really interested in symbolism. I’ve been a graphic designer my whole life, or rather I’ve been an artist my whole life, but I’ve been a graphic designer since my teens.
It feels like my whole life. I just turned 40 not too long ago ago. So design and art, that kind of led me to want to learn more about symbolism. And so I found that I kind of was really consuming a lot of information about the world of symbolism, but I wasn’t putting out anything. So I felt like it was kind of one sided. So in 2020, I decided to pull the trigger and start putting stuff out online. And it’s been an interesting journey, that’s for sure. I tend to focus more on social media content, but these days, I’m leaning more towards wanting to do longer form content for YouTube and things like that.
But the project, I feel like, has kind of just started, too, to be honest with you. I feel like even though it’s been a handful of years, it feels like I’m still getting sort of my traction going and my footing with everything, so it’ll continue to evolve. There’s different little phases that I feel like I’ve had with the project where I was really focusing on creating a poster series and doing illustrations and things like that. I tried to interview people for a little while. I realized that I’m actually not a very good host. You know, I felt like I wanted to interject my opinion way too much.
And I think a good host kind of, it depends on the show, obviously, but kind of like, allows the guests to kind of get things off their chest and everything else. And I’m like, I think there’s people better suited to do this than myself. But, yeah, so that’s kind of symbolic studies in a nutshell. So things are continuing to evolve and, you know, uh, change and all that kind of stuff for the project. I feel you on that. I think I’m a horrible host sometimes because I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. But, uh, also one of the things that keeps me going, and look at me interjecting, uh, me here, but one of the things that keeps me going is just thinking, like, this is more compelling than someone watching housewives or watching, you know, some other.
And I don’t criticize housewives, but I would rather someone listening to this conversation, then whatever the hell is going on in that kind of realm. So as long as I feel that, that imbalance and contents out there, then I don’t feel so bad about, as. As amateur and horrible as I am at doing some of this stuff. I also really relate to you when you said you kind of started out in, like, a conspiratorial angle and, man, in retrospect, 2020. Yeah. By then, it was really clear that conspiracy theories and a lot of the things that get grouped into that category are sort of, like, put you into a Persona non grata status on a lot of these different platforms to where if you just acknowledge a single word or just a thing that happened and don’t have an immediate objection to it, and you’re just, like, slamming it, then you kind of find yourself in no man’s land, and especially in a place where you’re just kind of, like, shadow banned.
So, yeah, I agree with you. I think you made a very smart choice in just latching on to symbolism because I think it’s just as important and potent and powerful, and there’s just as much traction and meaning you can put into it. And it carries almost none of the baggage that some of, like, the highly. Because at this point, conspiracy theories are just all highly charged, radical political stances, it seems. Or at least they’re being all kind of painted that way, so. Yeah, exactly. Symbolism. Is there controversial symbolism? I guess I can think of a certain, uh, german tilted symbol that still kind of, uh, evokes a little bit.
But are there any other, like, really powerful symbols that would make you Persona non grata still? Yeah, you know what? That’s one of them, for sure. I feel like I’ve avoided really getting into that topic, um, for a few different reasons. And so I feel like at some point, though, I really need to. We gotta take it back eventually. We gotta take it back. It’s a beautiful symbol. You know, it’s really incredible what it represented to a lot of different cultures. Obviously, the further east you go, the more you’re going to see it. The last show that we were actually on together, I kind of mentioned that, too, being in India and really seeing the swastika everywhere and kind of what it represented to people and how it was revered.
And so that symbol, to me, is probably the most controversial one that you can possibly kind of get to or discuss or show or what have you. I’ve mentioned it a few times in videos, and I always get comments. It depends on the intelligence of the audience, though. So, like on TikTok as an example, I get more negative comments when I talk about things like that versus YouTube or, you know, people on my Patreon wouldn’t necessarily care or don’t care about that kind of thing. But I can’t think of another one, honestly, that kind of tops it.
That one is so charged because of its history and everything else. It is kind of the symbol that I think of with that personally and the meaning behind it, too, which I know really isn’t. The point of this show is really extraordinarily deep. There’s many, many layers to it. And so what I’ve tried to do with my project is have more of a foundation with symbolism, like have an understanding of fundamental symbolism. So I love hearing people’s take on whatever it is they might be interested in, to be honest with you. So whatever sort of event might be kind of playing out on the world stage or a music video or things like that, I think that’s interesting.
There’s a lot of really talented decoders out there right now. It’s become more of, over the last decade, it’s become more of a thing, and I think that’s cool. But one of the things that I think that I’ve tried to do for myself at least, is have a really basic understanding of really simple symbols, too. Like the square, the circle, the cross, the dot, you know, basic polygons, the tree, the mountain, you know, light and color and things like that. So that’s what I’ve tried to do for myself. And I feel like the more I have this sort of like, concrete, solid foundation, I feel like my decoding efforts are like that much stronger because I have sort of that under my feet.
I mean, yeah, let’s. Let’s start, I guess, with the very basic building blocks of square, circle, dot. All like monad essentially, right. One of the interpretations is that you start with the dot and then a circle, basically like the dot. I’m going to get all this wrong, so I’m going to rely on you to correct me on some of this. The dot represents something existing or not existing. The most basic premise, the most basic binary that there is, it either is or isn’t. If there’s a dot on the paper, well, now there’s an island. And then you put the circle around the dot.
And now you’re defining all sorts of things. You’re defining space and relations and ratios because how big is the circle? How far away is it? You’ve now defined an inside and an outside. You’ve got something that looks like a dot in a circle. So you’ve got enclosed. And so, like. And every time you add another shaped triangle on a square, you keep defining, like, more and more rules and more complexity. So in a very vague sense, because I want it to sound like, you know, I’ve got some deep thought behind this, but I really don’t. But, like, is everything just dots? Like, are all symbols, just a bunch of dots put together at a certain point? You know, pretty much, yeah.
I mean, when you really break it down. Exactly. And so the material I’m reading right now really gets into the metaphysics of the center, and the center being this idea that essentially it’s not unlike the dot in that the dot represents the symbolic center of all that is. So to me, the way I tend to look at it is that it’s the center of the cosmos, actually. It’s the point of pivot for everything. And it’s really interesting when you bring up the circumpunct as an example. Well, how do you draw that? Or what sort of a symbol that actually corresponds with that? And it would be the compass, right? Because you use the compass to actually create the circle, right.
So you need to have the point of pivot with the compass. So that would be the symbolic dot in the middle. And then you can actually draw a perfect circle around it. And so in a way, the dot symbolically represents the point of pivot for everything. The way I tend to interpret center symbolism is that it relates very heavily to world tree symbolism, to mountain symbolism. Every single shape has that center. It can’t exist without that center. When you get into center symbolism, basically, what a lot of people have said, symbologists and things like that, is that the center is the point of which everything emanates, but then also returns to.
And so in a way, it’s kind of like a torus field or something along these lines. And so on one hand, the dot represents the center of all that is so, kind of has symbolic themes related to the seed and the egg, things like that. But on another level, it’s also the totality of everything, of all that is as well. It’s the universe itself. So there’s a micro and a macro component to the dot. So it just depends, kind of like what you were alluding to. It’s like how close or how zoomed out are you from it? If you’re really far away, it’s basically like seemingly non existent, you know? But if you’re really close to it, if you even go within it as an example, it becomes the totality of everything.
It’s the blackness of space, if you will. And so I see a lot of symbols as representing the middle of something, the middle of all that is, but then also kind of like the whole entire expansiveness of everything that is, too. I think the world tree is a really good example of this as well. It represents a point of pivot. There are many cultures that had a symbolic world tree in their culture. That world tree oftentimes was like the sacred center of their region or of their village or something along these lines. It wasn’t uncommon for different peoples to have traditions that involve the world tree.
So they might bury the ashes of their ancestors at the roots of the world tree as an example. There’s a ton of myths about the world tree. What the world tree also represents, though, is it’s a bridge between heaven and earth. Symbolically, I would say the mountain is very similar to that. The pillar or the column is very similar to that, too. It’s a, it bridges the gap between the above and the below. Man, symbolically is related to this as well. But when you look at even, you know, a column from the top down perspective, what do you have? Is just going to be kind of like a symbolic dot or you look at a pole from the top down perspective, it’s going to be like a symbolic dot.
The tree as well. Top down perspective, far enough away, it’s just kind of like a symbolic dot. And so, you know, what I found is that a lot of ancient peoples had like a central totem, basically, and this central totem was like the center of their, again, region or village or empire or something along these lines. And oftentimes they kind of marked that location as being the center of the world. And so there’s all these different stones around the world that kind of represent that. So a lot of standing stones represented that. The omphalo stone represented that.
It was considered the navel of the world. The Kaaba cube in Mecca represents that as well. Can you forgive my ignorance? What’s a standing stone? Oh, yeah. So a standing stone basically just looks like a, an erect stone. And so it’s almost like a phallic stone or something. Okay. Not a stone that you stand on, but the stone is the thing that’s standing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes. Yep. And so these standing stones you’re gonna find all over Europe as an example. And so these, like Stonehenge, is that standing stone? Those are standing stones, yeah, they’re in a different formation, obviously.
So they’re, they’re, they create like, structures and things like that. But oftentimes these standing stones, you can find one of them by themselves and they’re kind of like isolated. It’s not uncommon for these standing stones to have spirals around them or concentric rings around them or something along these lines. But my understanding is that ancient peoples, primordial peoples, had a reverence for that center. And this is where they would congregate and create new laws and have different meetings and festivals and rituals and things like that. And actually, there’s a really interesting dynamic too, with kings and emperors and lords corresponding with this stone and that they wanted their laws to kind of emanate from this central location.
Basically, if you look in the tarot, actually, it’s really fascinating. The emperor card, the fourth card of the major Arcana. It’s not uncommon for the emperor to be standing, or, excuse me, sitting on a cubic stone. And this cubic stone kind of represents the same sort of idea. It’s this central stone, basically. And sometimes this stone, no matter kind of what it looked like symbolically, it acted as a dividing stone. Because what it did was it divided the whole entire region from like north, south, east and west. So what it did was it quartered the land.
And so this central stone is really fascinating. It’s been one of my rabbit holes over the last like handful of years. Just how many different cultures have this sort of stone. But what it did, though, it gave people something to revolve around, literally revolve around. And so a lot of pilgrimage locations. It’s really interesting. Or a lot of temples might have like a central sort of column. I know in voodoo, they have a central column in some temples and it’s called the Potomitan. And they circumambulate that pole, right? That column, the May pole ceremony, the same thing you’re circumambulating.
You’re revolving around this central pole. And then in Mecca, same thing, you go to Mecca, that’s called your hajj, your pilgrimage. And so they say that that’s the fifth pillar in Islam. But you go to the Kaaba cube and you circumambulate seven times. You’re going counterclockwise seven times around this central cube, which the cube itself, not unlike the stone, it represents exactly what I said. Like with the dot, it quote, s the center of everything, but it’s the totality of everything as well. So the cube represents the center of the universe for people of that faith.
But then the cube itself also represents space itself. It’s the six directions, up, down, forward, backward, left and right. You know, so I see the dot as kind of representing always that, that center, basically based on my research. So hopefully that made a lot of sense or some sense. And you also define the dot followed by and in your words, perfect circle. And then actually, to go on a little bit of a tangent here, but I love how you’re describing not just different perspectives, but the way you were saying, bring yourself into that circle, or like zoom all the way in, or zoom all the way out.
Like there’s jumping between the macro and the micro to constantly check your perception on something. So I guess as an ambiguous thought experiment. But I’m just wondering when you actually draw that compass, right? It’s a perfect circle only from a certain distance away. But the second you zoom in close enough, like there’s never really a perfect circle ever, right? Because the parchment paper that you’re drawing on and the thing that you’re using, if you’re using an ink pen, for example, it’s being absorbed by the medium and creating a non perfect, sort of like a lumpy surface if you were to look close enough at it so that at any point, there’s almost like, no such thing as a circle.
There’s no such thing. And I guess if you get into, like, platonic solids, there’s really no such thing as a cube. Like, you can’t actually have a cubic stone ever. And it would basically break reality if a real perfect version of that existed. And this is what fascinates me so much about symbols, is that if you take that as the micro, if you can say, okay, yeah, there can’t ever be a perfect cube of salt, because if you zoom in far enough, you always find, like, a little chip somewhere, or I. So he’s going to be off some water.
It might be parallelogram and not a perfect cube. Right? So these are like the platonic solids that only exist in theory. And as something that we base what we’re actually creating on, does that apply to symbols as a whole, too? Like, for example, across, or, you know, the naughty german symbol? If you were to see one of these things, can it ever actually represent the thing that it’s supposed to be representing fully and assuming the answer is no? Because that’s kind of logical collusion. But I wonder, do any symbols or shapes or anything, does it have inherent potency or power in itself? Or is it only ever evoking a response in, like, another person’s brain or their experience? Does that make sense? Yeah.
Yeah, totally. No, I think in a way, in some ways, both are true. So I think that you’re right. You can’t have a perfect circle. You don’t have a perfect cube. These are conceptual. But then, on the other hand, I do think that there is a resonance there. And so I do think, as an example, the spiral, it’s a really ancient, primordial symbol. I think that when you see a spiral, or even when you draw a spiral or I’m making this motion right now with my pen, that there is a potency. I think that there is something that is potentially kind of going on there, you know? And I think this kind of relates to why people even do rituals to begin with.
So why. What’s the point of calling out the different directions or drawing a pentagram or something along these lines or having something that’s kind of symbolic of fire? Ultimately, what I see is that the way I personally perceive things is, it seems to me like the world of symbols actually precedes the world of physical matter. And so physical matter came after the symbolic world. So I think the world of symbolism, the world of metaphor, the world of story, the world of spirit, things like that. I think that these actually are the real foundations here. And I think that before there was a pen, I think that there was the concept of the pen.
So maybe even the concept of the cube. Even though you can’t have an actual perfect cube in 3d reality, in spatial, physical reality, conceptually you can. And the conceptual world preceded the material world, then the perfect cube kind of does exist. What about for blind people? Is there potency in, I guess, graphic symbols? Metaphors is its own thing. But if we talk about inscribing symbols and all these things, does it, are there people that can’t see out there that are just never going to be in on, like, the power of symbols? That’s a great question. You know, I haven’t really.
I would have to think about that, to be honest with you, because, like, I wonder if a blind person could be offended by a pentagram. Right? Well, you know what? It’s so funny because these things are culturally based and kind of culturally specific. So, like, one of the things I’ve really gotten into lately is literally just like, the mindset of the east versus. Versus the west and how eastern peoples see things, how eastern traditions tend to see things, what symbols they tend to revere and kind of put on a pedestal, how they kind of see metaphysics and, like, magic and things like that versus how western people tend to see things, how the modern world tends to see things.
And so it’s fascinating to me that certain symbols, really, depending on the culture, the meaning, is completely inverted. As an example, I kind of grew up thinking that the sun was always masculine. I don’t know about yourself, but I tended to see it as more of. Kind of like a patriarchal sort of thing or, like, related to the sun. Right? S o n. But there are different cultures that have a completely different opinion about that. They actually see it as being more feminine in nature and that it’s more of a motherly sort of figure and that the moon is more masculine in that world.
And so I think it’s kind of fascinating that, you know, symbolically, I might have an opinion about one symbol and I might have an emotional reaction. Response or someone who went through something traumatic in maybe, I don’t know, in some country that had some symbol on their flag or whatever, they might have a visceral reaction to a symbol that someone else around the world maybe thinks is perfect and lovely and beautiful and, you know, worth kind of like having as a necklace or something like that. But a blind person, though, still lives in the world of symbolism.
And actually, I’ll have to think about this when we get off air or whatever. But what do they think about symbolism? How do they see these things? They have words for these things, but they’ve never actually seen it themselves. And this would obviously be contextual, based on if somebody went blind later on in their life and they had, like, a lifetime to kind of see movies and photographs and travel and things like that. Or if somebody was born blind, you know, you’re born and, like, your optic nerve was severed and you have no frame of reference, but you can do math and you can prove that a cube exists, and then you can construct a cube.
But, yeah, like, what are you, if you’re visualizing at all? And I guess on that same thread, would you. Would it be even possible to be offended by, like, a pentagram? Cause someone would have to describe to you first what it was, and then even if you can’t visualize it and then be like, okay, now get angry about this thing that you can’t quite visualize. Get real angry about it because it’s offensive. Right, right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I’m not sure, man. Yeah. That’s something to think about, though. I like that question. Well, I guess on the tail end of that question and rephrase in a similar way, is it possible that a symbol, any symbol that you can think of could have some sort of an objective truth or message or effect on somebody? Like, if you code a room in spirals, do they just get confused? Is that just something that will always happen to someone? Is there any sort of objective truth to symbols, or is it always based on culture and education and learning about what it is? That’s interesting because obviously, in the world of marketing, you know, they employ a lot of psychologists, right? And so they know what certain colors do to people.
Obviously, you’ve done a ton of work on, like, mkultra and things like that, right? Well, and culturally, too. Like. Like, red apparently makes you hungry in the western world, but red does not have the same marketing impacts in the east. Just like you were describing symbols and the sun and moon symbolism. So there’s inversions all. Like, red is a color of, I believe, of weddings in the east of. And not white. You wouldn’t wear white to a wedding. But white represents purity and, like, innocence and all these things that we put on top of it. Right.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you know, or, like, the serpent, you know, is a really good example, too, where it’s like, even if, you know, a lot of people have this visceral reaction when they see anything serpentine at all. And so they see it, and they automatically are like, this isn’t good. I got to get away. Or, you know, what is that? My mom is a perfect example of that. She really. She’s terrified of snakes. But there’s some cultures, too, that have a reverence for the snake, and that the snake is really wise, and it represents some sort of deity, and there’s things to learn from it, and it’s the curves of life and everything else.
So, you know, I’m kind of more inclined to think that it’s contextual, but we are hardwired to kind of, like, think a certain kind of way, and we’re hardwired to reproduce as an example and things like that. So if you got to, like, our reptilian brain, you know, there’s certain things that I think everyone one is going to kind of react to in a way. But I don’t know if it’s a graphic symbol. I don’t know if you could literally draw something on a piece of paper and it’s going to trigger somebody. I think that when I think of symbolism, too, I think of the actual representation of it.
So say, like a fire or an animal or an actual tree or something along the sun or something like that. But as far as a graphic representation, something you draw, I’m not sure. I did hear a story one time. Maybe you’ve heard this before, too, of Aleister Crowley drawing some sort of sigil on a piece of paper and then giving it to somebody and that it completely locked them into his programming or something like that. Have you heard that story before? I have, and actually, that’s exactly where I was going to bring this. Was that the concept of sigil magic and more specifically, talismans.
The concept is that you could go and buy a talisman, like talisman and Jupiter or something, and you didn’t have to understand it, you didn’t have to make it. You didn’t have to know anything about it other than you just kept it on your person. In some cases, literally. Like, it would have to touch your skin to have some kind of. But that almost implies that there was a large group of people, and probably still do. They just think that the sigil itself and just someone depicting it and manifesting it in some kind of physical form, that it just inherently has power wherever it goes, no matter who’s touching it.
I mean, I might throw like mormon magic underpants into this mix too, where they have essentially like freemasonic symbols that are pushed against the skin, which might then link to Joseph Smith’s fascination with literal magical talismans and stuff. But do you, Mario, give any credit to like a talisman or a sigil having some inherent, you know, potency? You know, to me as a, as an artiste, uh, graphic designer, I can acknowledge the energetic quality of it, right. I can look at it and be like, wow, there’s a lot of movement in here. Or this is really sophisticated because it’s both like an open design and a closed design and they’re encoding this and they’re encoding that.
And so I can kind of see what’s really going on there. But when it comes down to it though, I don’t think that it’s necessarily, I don’t know, sort of what you can actually do with that. That’s actually going to cause some sort of specific reaction with somebody. I’m inclined to think, no, that there are qualities to it. It is something that you can decode and break down. There’s probably layers to it that you can really unpack and all of that. But I don’t think that you can actually create a sigil that’s going to create some sort of universal reaction, um, within people more than likely.
You know, I think you can have a cultural symbol and like you show somebody this or that and whatever, and most people are going to say, oh, you know, whatever it is. But I think that if you take that around the world, you’re probably going to get a different reaction. But as an example too, just speaking of like the hardwired thing, thinking of woman as a symbol, you know, a naked woman as an example, how powerful is that? Right? And so it’s just like around the world you’re probably going to get a similar sort of reaction, but it depends on where you go.
You might go to an orthodox, really conservative country and they might be offended by it or think that it’s kind of low brow or something like that. But that’s kind of what I think of is there are certain things that can be shown to people that will get their mind going in one way or the other. But an actual glyph or sigil, probably nothing. It’s shortcut and orthodoxy. You just got to pop some angel wings on it. And then it goes from like, that’s offensive. That’s a naked woman. You’re like, no, no, it’s an angel. And then everyone’s like, oh, okay, okay, it’s fine now, right? There you go.
I guess also talking about, like, this potency and, like, the symbolism. And you mentioned marketing, and I’m sure being a graphic designer, you got to be keenly aware of all sorts of tricks that you can use in symbolism to, like, convey motion and draw. The eye is, like, a really big one. Like, getting someone’s eye to move around a piece intelligently. Like, not just haphazardly, but, like, put this angle or put this color here so that it leads it around so on. I guess a little bit in that premise. But do you believe when people talk about encoding symbols, that there’s also, especially in, like, the decoding world, there’s a propensity to be like, oh, that corporate logo? Like, they baked in evil sentiment into this thing.
And, like, if you buy the Ford or the mercury car. Well, mercury is actually, you know, has an astrological meaning and that our mazda is this ancient, you know, God deity. And that they’re baking these things into corporate symbolism to trick you and swindle you. And I guess in the most nefarious cases, that if you go out and you bought that, you know, that Kia or whatever, that you’re actually the Elantra or the altar, the Nissan Altima, right? If I go out and buy a Nissan Altima, that I’m somehow worshiping this pagan God and that they’ve got part of my soul now, like, you know, you know, I’m talking about the people that.
So how do you give credit to that? Do you think that there’s actually a risk that, you know, you’re giving up portions of your soul by falling into certain types of symbols. I don’t think personally, that you’re giving away part of your soul by doing that, by purchasing things that might have some sort. Sort of, like, encoded message in their branding or whatever. But I do think that there are brands that. That do do that. However, I think that the sort of decoding world, I think that they tend to really kind of exaggerate some of these claims a little bit.
Personally, although I’ve been on the other side of that, I’ve been the person that people are saying, like, hey, man, you’re reaching or you’re seeing something that isn’t there. So I know what you don’t know the boundaries. You gotta, like, step over the boundaries sometimes to know where they are. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The other thing I think of, though, personally, with all of that stuff is these myths and these deities and these symbols have been around for a long time for a good reason. So there’s been. I’d like to think that some of these myths, as an example, they weren’t just created from one person’s mind.
It’s like they were refined over generations and generations, so that the God of war has all of this potent sort of symbolism attached to him, different objects and storylines and how his life played out or whatever, to really be, like, a personification of war as an example. So these storylines and myths and stuff, I think that they’ve been created over time for maximum value, pretty much. So then if you read this story, you’re like, wow, why does this resonate? Why am I getting. There’s so many lessons here. It’s making my mind think, and it’s kind of, there might be a spiritual quality to that.
And so these things exist for a very good reason. And so I can’t blame any business for taking advantage of that. You know, it’s really funny, in India, there’s so many cafes and restaurants where it’s like Shiva cafe or something along these lines. You know, it’s very, like, over and very open. And there’s many examples of this. A lot of, like, kind of like gurus and babas and things like that have their own, like, stores and, like, little tiny shops and whatever. So it’s like, in complete overdrive over there. And so I think it makes sense.
I think humanity, they’re drawing inspiration from this, and I’ve done this as a designer, to be honest with you. So when I was really interested in, like, occult symbolism and really starting to dip my toes into some of this stuff, the cube became an interest of mine. And it’s funny, we kind of talked about the cube already, but the cube is a very interesting symbol. And I was, like, thinking about it and kind of researching it and seeing how maybe some darker occultists view the cube and how there’s different sigils that kind of make use of the cube and whatnot.
And when I was doing a project for a client, I was working at this ad agency, I was freelancing there, and I was doing a logo for a client, and I came up with all of these traditional sort of logos, sort of my classic sort of, like, design philosophy or whatever. And then I decided to draw a few symbols based on a cube. And I knew what the inspiration was, but I started thinking, I’m like, you know, is this guy going to be interested in these glyphs or symbols that to me, have this sort of occulted kind of aspect to it.
There’s these different layers to it that the other logos definitely didn’t have because they were kind of more traditional. I presented all of these logos, and I was surprised but not surprised that he actually ended up picking the cubic design, you know? And I did that, like, two or three times in a row where I’m like, this is my chance just to kind of play with this and see if there is something to it. And every single time that I kind of had more of, like a. I guess, an influence from that world, it totally resonated.
And that was the one that they gravitated towards. And so I can’t say I really do that too much these days, but there is a phase in my life. There’s, like, a season where I kind of did that and experimented, and I was kind of surprised that it did work. Do you think there’s any form of, like, genetic memory when it comes to symbols that if you were. If you, like, raise the kid in a complete isolation and, you know, like, a. Like, a stranger things style underground lab, that certain symbols would still evoke some kind of response just because their ancestors had invoked, you know, put all this different meaning into it? I.
I think something along those lines. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. How does it stick around or whatever? I’m not sure, but, yeah, I can personally see something along those lines. And I’ve always wondered, too, what would happen if you raised a kid like that. That was, like, one of my thought experiments forever ago was if they were kind of underexposed and limited, like, how would they see the world? Or one of the things I thought of kind of an experiment like that. This is going on a tangent, but if you raised a kid and you told him or her that they were completely magical and that they were capable of doing anything and that they could, like, do feats that were, like, you know, beyond anything that were capable of.
Like, an indigo child. Yeah. Like, would they actually be capable of doing those things if they had that sort of positive reinforcement their whole entire life? You know, I’m not sure. Yeah, if so, there’s probably people out there that would have kids are, like, flying around and doing all sorts of. Maybe that’s part of it. And I guess to just transition this into another kind of big topic about symbolism. But I wonder, like, for example, Stanley Kubrick movies, which I think we both share a huge passion about Stanley Kubrick, in some ways, there tends to be a whole school of thought that every frame in any Stanley Kubrick movie is just absolutely boiling over in symbolism that.
That the man himself might have sat down and analyzed the direction that props were facing in the background. And he’s out there, like, just twisting oatmeal cans just, like, ten degrees to the left and all these things where. To the point where nothing at all is arbitrary, I guess, leading into some Stanley Kubrick talk. But I just wonder, is there a difference in your mind between symbolism that the person puts there that Stanley Kubrick put into that movie versus the symbolism that everyone else puts into it? Like, if. If he were to step back and be like, oh, I didn’t notice that Danny was wearing an Apollo eleven shirt when he stood up in that scene in the shining.
I had no idea that that might be construed. But then. Now people are like, that’s proof. That’s the absolute proof that he wasn’t on the moon landing. And how much does that, like, does it matter that the person creating it intended for there to be some sort of message versus people putting it in there? Well, I think it’s interesting. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but there are a number of artists and authors and filmmakers and things like that where they say that when they were done with the project, they were done writing the book or writing that album or whatnot.
That they realized that they were divinely inspired, that these ideas came from somewhere else. I didn’t know why I needed to put this in there, this lyric. I don’t know why I had to shoot this scene or whatever, but it seemed like a good idea at the time I did it. Now, in hindsight, it’s like one of the cornerstones of the actual project or piece or whatever. And it’s, like, meaningful, and it’s layered and nuanced and things like that. So I think that Stanley Kubrick definitely put in his all. With all of his projects, and I think that he was hired to do that as well.
I think that he was basically aware of subliminal messaging and subliminal programming, pretty much. I think that he probably either. He just had, like, an innate interest in it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he went through some sort of training or something along these lines to really, like, beef up his awareness of how to actually do that. Subliminal messaging and programming is something that I got interested in years ago as it relates to, like, mkultra stuff, but then also some of the classic sort of subliminal messages that have appeared, like, in media and in marketing and things like that.
I read this book about subliminal marketing. And it kind of blew my mind. Some of the techniques that people were using, like in the sixties, like in the sixties and seventies and things like that, like in magazines and whatever. And so I think he definitely had a keen awareness of that. I think he understood sort of even the, like, metaphysical, magical sort of, you know, quality of doing that sort of stuff. And people aren’t necessarily going to articulate why it was such a good movie or why I was so intrigued or why I was so creeped out or something like that with the shining, but there’s definitely something that people are going to pick up from that.
And so I think he was definitely doing that to a very, very sophisticated degree. But then I also kind of think that synchro mysticism or the universe at large kind of, like, takes over or something like that and will even fill in the gaps and kind of like, you know, when there’s, like, so much momentum behind a project or when there’s bound to be so many eyeballs on it and things like that, I think the universe kind of has a way of playing with people’s projects, and sometimes we’ll even, in a way, you know, I don’t know if I can necessarily explain it, but kind of, like, orchestrate some things to kind of fall into place so that there’s even more value and more symbolism sort of behind it.
But just like, real synchronicities in real life where you go through something and you see something or you have some sort of experience, and you’re like, wait a second. How did all of this line up like this? This is too perfect. This isn’t a coincidence. That’s the meaning of synchronicities, a meaningful coincidence, too. The most mundane versions of those that I always wonder, is this means something, or is this just silly? Like, when you’re going somewhere important or like it’s meaningful, and then the song you’re listening to on the radio, it ends at the exact moment that you pull into that parking spot.
And it’s just like, as you turn it off, the song ends. And I always wonder, is like, is this a sign that I’m on the right path? Was this preordained? Is there just complete lack of free will and I’m just, like, at the whims of the universe? Right, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, you know, when those types of things happen, or dreams, too, can kind of be like this and everything else, and then later on that day, something happens or whatever, there’s definitely something that’s undeniable about them. And I don’t know if I can completely explain what the whole phenomenon is all about.
But I think that sometimes with these projects, that that’s kind of an aspect, too, is that the universe kind of plays a role in this whole entire dynamic, too. So I think in Kubrick movies, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case. And then when someone sees that coincidence or how it’s layered with something else, I think more often than not, people are gonna give Kubrick credit. But I also think too, and I don’t know how much information there is about this, but because you just put out your comic or you’re getting ready to. Kubrick being kind of, like a funnel for, like, a whole entire team of people and him kind of getting a lot of credit for maybe what dozens of people sort of put together on his behalf.
You know, I wonder about that, too, that we give Kubrick all of this credit, but who knows who was actually, like, in his team and what they were responsible for? I don’t know if you’ve gone down the Beatles rabbit hole with everything else, but, you know, they got a lot of credit for a lot of things. But in actuality, they had, like, studio musicians, like, actually, like, recording on their behalf and things like that. And so they get all of the love and they get all of the praise, but in actuality, it was like an intelligence thing.
You know, they become figureheads, in a way. And, yeah, Kubrick. Kubrick had very similar. Same thing. Like, when he was working on 2001 Space Odyssey, there was an entire warehouse that they had built just for the model makers. They called it Santa’s workshop because they were just, like, always working on stuff. But, yeah, they very, very rarely are people praising, like, the hundreds of people that are involved in one of these big projects. Right, Kubrick? Endless movies. Like, every movie people decode ad nauseum. But I think that the Shining is, like, one of the more popular ones that takes on a huge variety.
Do you have your own interpretation of what the shining was really about? Like, if we assume that it’s not just a creepy horror movie based on a Stephen King novel, is there something else that Stanley Kubrick was intentionally trying to tell a story about? And what is that? Right. Right. That’s a great question. Yeah, I do have my own opinion about it, and I don’t know if I have, like, an overarching. Like, this is exactly what he was referencing here. But there’s certain things in the film that I’ve picked up that I haven’t heard other people talk about.
Maybe there are some channels out there that have picked up on, you know, certain things. As an example, I’m sure you’ve probably heard of the whole thing about Jack being the Minotaur. The Minotaur, right. Because of Minotaur Productions, which is Stanley Kubrick’s production company, and. Yeah, right, right. So, to me, that was very interesting. And I picked that up as well before I read anywhere that people were kind of, like, putting that together, too. And I’m like, that is fascinating because of the labyrinth, the maze. The hedge maze, which isn’t in the book. Right. So it’s hedge animals in the book.
And so he changed it to a hedge maze. And then Jack is literally holding the axe with him. Right. And then he literally goes to the hedge maze, and obviously, that’s where he ends up dying, freezing to death. And so I’m like, that is too perfect for the Minotaur thing. And then, just like you brought up the Minotaur productions, and then there’s a couple of other things in the film that allude to bull symbolism as well. And then there’s also Gemini symbolism. And so Jack being the Minotaur, so a half man, half bull. That reminds me of Taurus, and Taurus is right next to Gemini.
And so the twins and the bull are, like, right next to each other in the zodiac. And it’s really interesting. At the time, when I came across all this stuff, I was really, really interested in Taurus symbolism and bull symbolism, cow symbolism, everything. And the main thing I was really tugging at was the royal star within Taurus, called Aldebaran, or Aldebaran. And so it’s known as a royal star. So all of the fixed signs have a royal star attached to them. Aldebaran has, like, it’s huge, it’s red, it’s super fiery. It’s been compared to, like, Mars and things like that.
It’s really interesting. There’s a whole entire history behind this star that you can look into. It’s my understanding, actually, you know, the Vril society, you’ve probably gotten into some of that information, right? Yeah, the Vril. The Vril, yeah. They say that their ancestry comes from Aldebaran, and so that’s kind of an interesting sort of thing as well, but it’s really fascinating. It’s the eye of the bull, basically. Aldebaran. And so it’s the eye of the bull. And so there’s a bull’s eye sort of dynamic with this star. It’s also been referred to. As the gateway to hell.
And so this is because, according to people who believe that the galactic center is near Scorpio and Sagittarius, that means that the antecenter is actually where Taurus is, where Taurus and Gemini is. So there’s a lot of people who have a lot of different theories about different gateways in the universe and around the ecliptic and things like that. And so that is one of sort of the bridges, that’s one of the axis points would be between Scorpio and Sagittarius, and then opposite of that, which would be Taurus and Gemini. So there’s this gateway to hell dynamic with Aldebaran.
And it’s so interesting that there’s a few scenes where you actually see, like, a poster in the background, and it looks like a bull or it looks like a minotaur or something along these lines. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that one. It’s in particular, it’s a guy skiing, and it says monarch on his feet. Right. It’s almost like one of those magic eye paintings where you got to, like, squint and tilt your head a little bit and let your eyes defocus until you can kind of see the Minotaur. And then opposite from the Minotaur, across from this walkway, there’s another poster that has a cowboy on it.
And some of the interpretations of this are you’ve got the bull man, the Minotaur, and the cowboy, and that they’re both referencing this, like, taurus sort of symbolism. I wanted to ask you that in particular, that the skier, the monarch skier, that kind of looks like a yemenite minotaur. If you squint your eyes, is that. Is that just, like, putting meaning on top of it? Or would you consider that that Stanley Kubrick was like, hey, that kind of looks like a minotaur. We’re going to put that in the scene because it looks kind of like a minotaur.
Right. You know, I can’t really say, obviously, to be honest with you, but it seems as though that there is a Minotaur esque element to it. Right. And like I said, it’s right next to the twins. I. And so then in that scene, you have the twins in the doorway, and then behind them, you have what looks kind of like a bull poster. And so that might be the one that you’re referencing. I’m not sure, but it kind of looks like actual, like, horns, and it kind of looks like a Moloch sort of thing, to be honest with you.
And so Moloch symbolism totally relates to Aldebaran and things like that. And then there’s a scene where wendy is in her kitchen, I believe. Maybe it’s the living room, but there’s shelves behind her, and there’s salt and pepper shaker. And they’re actually, like, twins. They look like two small people. That’s salt and pepper right next to a bull little statuette figurine. And it’s, like, right above her head. And so that, to me, is kind of interesting, too, where there’s another placement, where there’s these twins right next to what looks kind of like a bull or a Taurus.
It definitely is a bull. If you look at it and you find a still of it or you pause it at that point, you’ll see it. And so I’m like, wait a second. I’m like, that is really bizarre. And then I’m like, is it implying that wendy is, like, the gateway to hell or something along these lines? And then another thing that I kind of picked up with everything is that there are so many doors in the film, it’s absolutely nuts. Like, you’re going through door after door after door after door. And some are, like, nonsensical doors too.
Yes, exactly right. 100%. And then you have very significant events that revolve around doors. So you have red rum. Right? You have Jack with the axe chopping down the door to get into the bathroom for wendy. And then you have the elevator doors opening, and then all the blood kind of rushes out and everything else. So all of that is to say is that there was definitely a point in time, years ago, where I was convinced. I’m like, there’s an Aldebaran gateway to hell sort of dynamic going on here. I don’t know if that’s exactly what Kubrick was trying to convey.
Another interesting side note with that, by the way, is that there are astrologers who basically say that the signing of the Declaration of Independence occurred at the rising of Aldebaran over the eastern horizon. So Ross, Ben is the guy who really got into that. So he does a whole entire breakdown called Mystic Philly, and he talks about all of the mystical aspects of Philadelphia and Benjamin Franklin and all of these different types of things. That sounds so cool. Yeah, it’s really. You would actually really dig his stuff. And he is the one who put that out there, saying that he thinks that literally Benjamin Franklin signed the Declaration of Independence to align with Aldebaran rising over the eastern horizon.
Okay, so intentionally so he. So he’s holding the pen, and he’s a. Hold on, guys. Hold on. Hold, hold. Okay, now sign. You know, now it’s the time to do this. He thinks that there’s a possibility that it was all premeditated to line up with this, which is really interesting for, you know, a lot of different reasons. And so there’s a whole entire thing here. And then Benjamin Franklin belonging to, like, the Hellfire club and things like that. It kind of like, you know, could make sense that way. And then at the very end, where is Jack? You know, the last sighting of Jack, he’s at the.
It’s in that ballroom photo, and it’s the 4 July ball. Right. And the. I don’t know how accurate all this is, but it seems that the original photo that they used for that final shot was actually some sort of party being thrown that included Woodrow Wilson or. And a whole bunch of other people that were involved in the Federal Reserve being passed. So now you’ve got these guys that were very much, I guess, anti american, or at least being pointed as, like, one of the main downfalls of America on July 4. So it’s like this ultimate juxtaposition of, like, here’s the Federal Reserve on July 4 celebrating the liberation of this country, but at the same time enslaving the country.
All in this one photo. Right, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So. So that’s all pretty interesting to me. I’ll say that I do have somewhat of a personal kind of sync with the shining. One day, we had visitors. I used to live in Portland, Oregon. So Portland, Oregon, isn’t too far away from Timberline Lodge, which is the inspiration for the hotel overlook hotel. And so the exterior shots of the hotel were actually taken at Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood. We had visitors in town, and one of the visitors was a tattoo artist. And he was actually creating all of this shining artwork.
And he even made a little. I think he, like, took a little door, and he illustrated, like, jack and Wendy and Danny on the door, and he put red rum on it and everything else. And we were kind of talking about all of that, and he was talking about how much he loves the movie, and I was talking about how much I love the movie. It’s one of my favorites. It’s probably my favorite Kubrick movie, actually. It used to be 2001. I would say the shining is probably my favorite now. And so we decided to kind of go out and just explore and go on a little hike and things like that.
We ended up finding a lot of St. John’s wort, which is a really interesting plant. And it’s connected to St. John, obviously. And St. John was beheaded. And even the medicine of St. John’s wort, it’s very red. And so that’s said to relate to, like, the blood of St. John from his beheading and everything else. And it was the perfect timing for St. John’s wort as well. So, like, late June, early July is when you want to harvest it, at least here in the Pacific Northwest. And then we were debating whether or not to go to Timberline Lodge.
And so we decided to actually just go to Timberline Lodge. And we ended up going. It was their first time seeing it, and they were tripping out because it’s, you know, the overlook hotel, basically. He ended up getting some, like, shining memorabilia and everything else. And we were just all super jazzed to be there and talk shining and everything else. And on the way home, we decided to watch the shining. And so at the time, I had this big screen and projector and everything else, and we watched it. It was particularly creepy, I’ll say, for a few different reasons, that the house was, like, kind of cracking, popping at, like, the worst times, basically, or the best times, depending on how you look at it.
And in the distance, there were all of these fireworks kind of going off in the neighborhood and everything else. We didn’t even really think about it. But it was 4 July, and so everyone around us was celebrating the 4 July. St. John’s wort is actually sometimes known as the 4 July Flower as well. And then when the movie wrapped up and we saw that it was the 4 July ball, our minds were completely blown because we had no anticipation of that. We weren’t even thinking about. That is such a small little detail that, you know, I’m sure when you watch the movie that when the photo comes up, you don’t think, 4 July ball.
But it’s right there. 4 July ball. And we’re like, oh, my God. All of the things that we did today and talked about today, and then we were at Timberline and everything else, it was just. It completely blew our minds. It was really fun. It did. Like, did Stanley Kubrick plan for you guys to watch his movie on that day? Like, that’s how deeply he’s involved in the experience of his movie. Totally. Like, not just that he was putting the salt and pepper shakers behind wendy, but he’s like, okay, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The ghost of Kubrick.
Are there. Are there other. You said 2001 Space Odyssey. Yeah. Is that the other, like, most symbolically potent version of a Kubrick movie. Like, do you think that there’s others that are just, like, dripping with symbolism? You know, I think they all are to a certain degree. But, yeah, I mean, I would say for me personally, what comes to mind? The Shining 2001 and then eyes wide shut. But it’s been a while since I’ve seen a handful of these, to be honest with you. But 2001 is so dense, man. There’s so many things going on there.
It’s been referred to as an alchemical film, and I think that’s right. I think there’s something to that, for sure. And just the budget that was put towards it and everything else, they needed to make it work and needed to be effective. Right. Eyes wide shut. Do you think that they. They took Stanley out as the result of eyes wide shut? Do you think that conspiracy has any legs? I’m not sure. I’ve definitely heard that over the years. Absolutely. You know, when I think about it, what I think is interesting as well is what some people have said, and I’d love to hear your take on this, actually, that he just went into hiding and that he had some part to play in 911, kind of like directing 911, and that that maybe was his, like, sort of final, actual, like, final, final project.
I’ve never before. I’ve actually never heard that Stanley Kubrick was involved in 911. I love it. Yeah. So I think it’s interesting. 2001, obviously, a Space odyssey, and then the event happened in 2001, clearly. And so I think that there may be something to be said about that, because I don’t know who you can find that would even be as sort of qualified to kind of pull off these types of events or orchestrate how they should kind of play out psychologically and things of that sort. So I don’t know. I can’t really say. I’m not really invested, you know, either way.
But I kind of think that maybe, you know, I don’t know if he got taken out or whatever. He was an inside guy. He was doing a lot of stuff for, you know, the system and the establishment, and he was very wealthy and everything else. So I don’t think he was, like, a rogue sort of person, personally. I think that he kind of knew his role, and I think that he wanted to kind of do it his way. He was a very. You know, this probably. Right. That he, like, didn’t like to travel and things like that.
Right. He would. He would listen to air traffic control in his free time, and he would listen for near misses. And if there was a near miss between a plane, he would note it, and then he would use that as justification of why he didn’t fly on planes. He would actually tell people, like, oh, there was three close calls today. This is. This is why I don’t fly on plan. I’m paraphrasing here, but this is, like, one of the things that he actually did. Someone’s like, hey, Stanley, are you done with that edit yet? And he’s like, not now.
I’m busy listening to air traffic controller traffic messages. I don’t know. It’s a weird mentality to be in. Definitely. I don’t think I knew that part, actually. That that’s really extreme. I mean, knowing his personality type, I’m not too shocked, to be honest with you. But he seems to me like he actually. I don’t think that he’s the type of person that really wants. Wanted to rock the boat too much. I think that he had sort of his artistic integrity with what he wanted to kind of put out there. And I think that he wanted to make audiences think and all of that.
But I don’t see him as someone who is, like, completely did his own thing against the system, personally. He wasn’t queue. Yeah, right. I see him more as kind of like a propagandist. And at least the narrative that I kind of built in my mind is it seems as though some of these directors. I think Chris Nolan is kind of like this. I think he’s kind of like a modern Kubrick in a way. I don’t think he’s, like. As his. I don’t think his work is, like, as high quality as Kubrick’s was at the time. But I see some of these directors as.
Because doing personal projects, basically, which allows them to. Or rather, doing projects for the system or the state or the establishment, a propaganda piece, so that they can do personal projects and that they kind of, like, cycle on. They do something personal that they really want to do, but then they have to do something that has some sort of propaganda angle or whatever. And so I see that with Kubrick, and I kind of see that with Chris Nolan. I’m not sure if that’s exactly how it works out, you know? But I can kind of see it.
Do. Do you see what I’m saying with that? Do you. Do you have a similar opinion, or what do you think? Yeah. Well, like, a good example of is Tenet. The movie. Tenet, I think, was the Nolan movie. And that. That the word tenet comes from I think the square of Saturn or one of the magic squares from, like, John D. Breaking planets down to these magical squares. But that. That was kind of the. I mean, the namesake of the damn movie. But it’s all based on this magical square. And you would never, ever know that unless you actually looked into what Tenet meant and what the magical square is.
But it almost feels that it wasn’t arbitrary and that that was done for a reason. And there’s actually some sort of magical incantation or other that’s baked into that movie because it’s the only thing that would make all that have sense. And I also. I see what you mean about maybe being a propagandist where, like, they are working from the system, benefiting from the system, you know, absolutely rich from the system. So then if. Let’s just. Let’s just make an assumption first that Stanley Kubrick directed the moon landings or was involved in it. And somehow, just for the sake of argument, what’s the rationale behind putting Danny in the Apollo eleven shirt in the room 237? Like, is this ego? Like, Stanley Kubrick’s like, oh, they need to know it was me.
You know, I need my stamp on this more directly. Or is it a disclosure? Like, hey, hey, guys. All you truth seekers out there, I’m leaving these breadcrumbs TikTok, you know, Q style. Like, here’s insider. This disclosing stuff, is it the karmic free or the karma free debt of revelation of the method? You know, a la James Shelby Downard? Is it all the above? Like, what. What’s the real motivation for disclosing? Hey, I was involved in the Apollo landings through the shining. Right, right. Yeah. I don’t know. That’s a great question. I mean, that is really fascinating, though, when you think about it.
To me, one of the things I think about with Kubrick is him. At some point, supposedly, this is an actual quote. Someone asked him about the ending of the moon landing. Moon landing, 2001 Space Odyssey. Same thing, same difference. And so someone asked him about the ending of one of his films, and I believe it was 2001. And he said something along the lines of, I don’t answer questions like that. I never answer why or what something means. I don’t talk about the meaning behind anything in any of my projects. And then he said, I don’t know myself.
I don’t even know myself. And so I don’t know if that’s actually true or nothing. But there’s something to be said about how open ended some of these endings are. And how they kind of. It’s like. It’s like it’s not a trick or it’s a technique, rather. It’s a technique that can be used for people to be even more mystified and not having sort of a nice, clean kind of ending. I just heard that the shining actually filmed an alternate ending for everything. And basically it was Wendy in the hospital with Danny and then the owner or manager or whatever of the overlook hotel visiting her in the hospital.
And there’s actually stills of this around and he basically alludes to her and this whole entire series of events with Jack actually being a figment of her imagination. And that they put this in the initial screenings and people didn’t really care for it. But when they had that scene removed, people actually enjoyed the ending much better. The ending that we all kind of know. And so that’s kind of interesting there, too, is that he actually intended potentially for this to be the actual ending. But people didn’t really care for it. So he decided to nix it.
Which apparently he was very notorious too, for editing up until the very last minute. You know. And that actually feeds into some of the eyes wide shut theories about, like, that’s why they took him out, was because that he would show a certain edit and get approval for that edit. But then, like, that night or that week would have a completely different edit. And it’s like you would use the approval to be like, oh, no. They said it was all good. Here it is. You know, put it. The print that was. I don’t know how much I believe in any of those things.
And honestly, I’m still coming to terms a little bit with what you’re putting out there is that maybe he wasn’t this, like, warrior of truth. Like, hey, let’s look. This guy was, like, profiting off of Hollywood. Like, benefiting from the system. So maybe there is, like, a propagandist aspect to it and it’s not trying to. I don’t know, like, give people the inside scoop and I. It’s a little bit of a cop out to do the, like, I don’t know what it means. I don’t even know what it means. You know, like, how can I tell you what it means if I don’t even know what it means to.
I think that that’s bullshit a little bit. I feel that he did know what the meaning was and maybe there was some complexity around it, but there’s almost no benefit to explain. It’s like explaining a joke to someone. There’s just zero benefit to it, at least from the standpoint of the person that’s trying to make them laugh. If you’re trying to tell someone joke and have them laugh at it, the last thing you ever want to do is you would rather just tell it to them and let it fall flat and then just be like, oh, well, I’ll try it on someone else else, as opposed to sit down and explain it.
Because now you’ve kind of defined the terms, and if it doesn’t meet those terms, then it’s kind of like an objective failure in a way. Like, you’ve defined what success and what failure is. And if you just don’t draw that line in the sand, then it’s completely ambiguous. Like, did I mean it? I don’t know. Did I? You know, I mean, like, that. That’s way more compelling than telling someone like, oh, no, no, there’s nothing to do to Minotaur. No, that’s. No, it’s definitely not in there. You know, I I don’t know. I guess there’s always around it, but you can kind of be all things to all people by just trying not to.
The classic cold reading technique, which I assume that you know a little bit about, like, uh, cold reading aspects and just always saying improv, almost, right. Always say yes, never say no. That’s the whole sort of name of the game. So I think he had a masterful way of doing that. I think that it’s true, I think. Claims that he had, like, a 200 plus iq or whatever, but that he was probably just toying with people that he worked with and the executives and stuff. Right? Oh, yeah, I could see that. I mean, of course, yeah, that’s the thing about him is that he was massively, you know, intelligent and, you know, kind of speaking of that, one of the things that has been really criticized with him and his work is that his.
A lot of his characters are, like, really cold and that a lot of the sort of, like, literally. Yeah, right. That there’s, like, a lack of humanity with his projects and things like that. And some people have said that that’s part of his propaganda, was that we’re kind of getting, like, actually, like, anti human sort of cinema, and then other people see it very differently of like, well, you know, that’s not necessarily the case. But when you look at, like, 2001, that was one of the most striking things to me personally, was just kind of like the coldness of the characters.
But then it’s also like, well, you know, if we’re traveling space and we’re more hooked up with all this technology and there’s AI and things like that. It’s like, the thing I’ve always kind of. Or what I’ve heard and what I think is kind of true is, like, you know, as technology advances, like, humans become more robotic and then robots become more human, like, you know, and that this is kind of like that merging that maybe singularity or something like that. And so to me, it would make sense that you would have characters that maybe aren’t as sort of, like, bubbly and warm and things like that.
And that people would kind of just be more even keeled and sort of, like, very straightforward and everything else. So almost like Hal, right? Hal is just very, like, logical, you know, all the way through this is, like, more of, like an intellectualized, logical, more like left brain sort of society that’s able to create some of this technology and everything also. So that’s one of the criticisms I’ve heard with people. And even just, like, the silence, too, in 2001 as well. Right. That was one of the most captivating things for me when I first saw it, I couldn’t even believe that it was from 1968.
Like, when I first saw it, I was like, holy shit. I’m like, this is really, really incredible. I’m like, I didn’t even realize filmmaking can be this good. Wait till you see the remake. They got this whole hip hop soundtrack behind it. It’s great. I’m kidding. I’m kidding for now. I’m sure that it’s in the works. Right, right. And actually, I never had heard that criticism of Kubrick before where he’s, like, dehumanizing people. I totally see that because, I mean, I’ve been rewatching all of Kubrick’s films recently. So full metal jacket is essentially the story about dehumanizing yourself so that you can go off into war and do all these different acts.
Clockwork orange. I mean, that’s almost the struggle of an absolute psychopath. And they’re trying to force morality and they’re trying to force warm blood into this, like, cold blooded creature of Alix Delarge. Right. Like, almost every one of those movies I can think of, maybe Spartacus is a hard one to fit into that one. But he was also kind of tacked on to that throughout the process. AI. If you include AI in his original screen screening of that, it was about a homunculus, apparently. Shout out David Charles Plate, who told me about that. But even the Spielberg version of AI, which was somewhat trying to be based on Kubrick’s thing, again, it’s about a cyborg.
It’s about Pinocchio. Right. Like a non human character, like an NPC that’s trying to kind of, like, find its way through the world. So now, I’ve never considered that before, but, yeah, now I feel like all of the Kubrick movies you can watch under a lens of not just transhumanism, but, like, anti humanism, like, removing the human spark from people and very designed ways. Right. Yeah. That’s what some people have said that has resonated with me. That kind of makes sense. I still appreciate his work and everything else and kind of, like, along those lines, too.
I think that it’s a reflection of the man himself with. I mean, people have all sorts of different things that they’ve said working with him. You know, the whole entire. The Shelley Duvall sort of thing is, like, the most classic example of how he treated her, right. That he was almost like a programmer or he was almost like a handler or something like that. Like, he knew how to push people, and he was very, very committed to his vision and you know about his shot ratio and everything else. Right? Like, how many shots he would do versus, like, normal door versus how many they actually keep.
And it’s like, screw it. Let’s just shoot it. We can always not use it. And then you’ve got a whole room of people that are like, oh, my God, not again. Right? Yeah. And so he would push people to the point of exhaustion, but oftentimes those people produced their best work of their whole entire career while working with him. So it’s just like. So he really pushed people in that regard. I just saw something last night preparing for today where I think it was. I can’t remember a cinematographer or something like that, that he really pushed to the brink, too, and that they were kinda of.
They had issues throughout the whole entire production. But he ended up winning, like, you know, an award for cinematography that year, that guy. And so it’s like he brought the best out of people, even though he had, you know, his kind of tyrannical way of doing it. The Shelley Duvall one’s a good example. And there have been all sorts of explanations of this on all sides. Like, no, he didn’t do that. And, yes, he did, but the conventional one I’ve heard explained is that. That he instructed the rest, the entire crew, to basically ignore Shelley Duvall if she needed anything or if she looked uncomfortable, just ignore.
Just walk by her, pretend she doesn’t even exist. He did that himself. And then was like, kind of in relation to that, like, love bombing Jack Nicholson and love bombing other characters. So Shelley Duvall sitting here, like, why the hell am I getting this, like, weird cold shoulder treatment? And on top of that was being overly aggressive and demanding and disappointed and just, just very negative feedback for her entire performance with this ultimate mad scientist goal of let’s get her to have an actual nervous breakdown on camera as she’s playing this role without her realizing that it’s being evoked for the, you know, sense of a performance, which there’s a lot of cruelty to that.
Like, a lot of mkultra, like, I’m going to just straight up psychologically torture this person. And because they signed up for it and they’re getting paid for it again, mkultra, if you. If it was like a paid trial, does that mean it was no longer sort of, like, nefarious work? Right. So, yeah, I totally see, I could see that happening. A lot of, I’ve heard a lot of people say, no, he didn’t do that. I think even Shelley Duvall at one point, someone got an interview out of her where she was like, no, no, it wasn’t like that.
But it does seem that that performance was evoked from, like, a very real sort of point of view. I could almost see where Jack is losing it. That’s probably just, you know, Jack Nicholson. That’s kind of like losing it from having to do too many damn takes over and over again. Right, right. Yeah, exactly. I would love to know where he developed this from. If he. It’s a learned technique. If it’s something that he just picked up over time, if it’s something he got from another director or something along these lines. Because, of course, like I said, you know, this.
We’ve been talking about it, but he was so methodical about everything that he truly knew what he was doing. And so. Yeah, so maybe this lack of humanity, like, it was. Is he like that? Does he kind of lack a spark? But I’ve heard people say that he was very warm to them as well. But I’ve also heard other actors say that once the movie was wrapped up, they never heard from him again, which in Hollywood, there is. If you make a movie together, you’re spending months and months and months together. So a lot of times people do stay in touch.
I know there’s, I’m sure, many, many examples where people don’t. But I’ve heard some people say that it kind of hurt their feelings that Stanley never reached out to them ever again. Even though they made, like, a whole entire motion picture together. I heard that specifically from the guy from Clockwork Orange. Oh, the guy who played Alex, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said that so that he thought that he was going to have this, like, lifelong friendship with him, and then that ended up not being the case at all. So I think he was just, you know, really intelligent.
People tend to be very, like, reclusive and things like that, and they know what they need or want out of people, and they can accomplish whatever project they want, and they can put their mind to it and whatever. But I think he was so intelligent that he probably just. Just preferred just to do his own thing. Clearly, if you had to make an objective call, Stanley Kubrick being a good guy or a bad guy, is that possible? Could you even lean one way or the other? Or is it just too ambiguous? I think it’s too ambiguous for me personally.
And so I kind of see him as just like all of us. You know, there’s just nuances, there’s different storylines that I know I’m not aware of with his life. Some of the things that would put him in the evil category could blow my mind if I. Even if we were aware of some of these things. So I don’t know. I can’t really say personally. And I tend to kind of be like this. This is more of, like, a philosophical thing for myself, anyway. I tend to not point out whether someone is like a savior or a scapegoat.
I’d rather not put all of my eggs in those baskets. And so I could see him basically being both. That on one level, he was just a normal guy from New York who was a photographer and always had aspirations to make cool projects and had a chess master from, like, age 14. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a normal thing, like just beating everyone in chess in Washington park. Yeah. And so I could see him having some of just, like, normal person aspirations, but being very gifted in his own right, you know, and then getting these different breaks in Hollywood.
And then maybe another interesting angle is that he saw how dark Hollywood was, and so he left to England and then never came back. That’s my understanding. And then so he shot everything in England. So even eyes wide shut, which I believe. Do they ever. I don’t know if they mentioned the city and eyes wide shut, you know, if it’s supposed to be New York or something like that, I think. Yeah, that’s a good question. I always assumed that it was New York. Yeah, I think it’s New York. I don’t know, if they ever say it, but that that’s all fabricated in English, I believe.
So was full metal jacket. I believe a lot of, like, the Vietnam scenes were all shot in England as well. And they had the entire vietnamese sets and, like, the trees pulled in and everything. But, yeah, none of that took place in Vietnam. Yeah. That’s amazing. So one of the reasons people have said is that he did not want to be in the US, mostly because of Hollywood, and that he did not want to be a Hollywood sort of director. So he, you know, he lived in England, shot everything in England. So, yeah, I can’t really say.
I do think he played a part in, you know, just the sort of mind control we find ourselves in. You know, you know, the space race and Sci-Fi. Personally, I think Sci-Fi is like a propaganda genre. And so I think it puts a lot of things into our minds that aren’t really possible, aren’t really true. I think it kind of, like, obscures things. I think it destroys things. I think it kind of inverts things. So I’m on the side of the fence where I don’t think you can actually go to outer space. I think that it’s become overly materialized, and we’re led to believe that you can visit, like, in an actual craft.
I think that’s kind of covering up a lot of information that people have passed down over the ages, that you can go to other spheres of reality. And these spheres of reality have corresponded with the planet planets, the traditional planets, and the fact that we live within multiple spheres, like nested spheres. But the way you get there is on an astral sort of level, that it’s through various ascension techniques and things like that. But to think that you can actually get into a ship and then go to a planet and then go to another planet, and then there’s ets up there and everything else.
That’s something that I personally don’t buy. And I think that that’s one of the big things that this movie was trying to kind of, like, thrust upon people and kind of solidify in their minds, which is why it came out a year or whatever before the moon landing, and which is why he had to film the moon landing. That’s another interesting take, is maybe if we set aside the concept that Kubrick directed the moon landing and that was all disclosure, maybe it’s just a disclosure that he was so smart that he realized you couldn’t actually go to space.
And that’s what all the message encoding into the shining was, was just like, this is clearly a dream world where things that can’t actually exist do exist. These doors go into rooms, and the room has a window that can’t exist. And here’s a rocket going off. None of this can exist. Right. That’s another interesting take on it, where he doesn’t have to be involved, but he could just be smart enough. And I think there’s a little bit of credit, because, like, you were saying, or you were asking earlier, like, how much did he know about some of the things that he was talking about? Well, for example, clockwork orange, I’m pretty damn convinced that he had insider information about the actual MkUltra program and, like, real mind control, because it’s so damn close to what real trauma based mind control was.
And then if you even rewind that back further, clockwork Orange is the very first major motion picture that mentions a certain substance that I don’t even want to say. I’ll just call it the YouTube substance that’s derived from adrenaline. But that. That was the first time that anyone mentioned that in popular media. And he got that reference from Anthony Burgess. Anthony Burgess got it from Aldous Huxley. And I’m positive that Stanley Kubrick would have known the entire lineage of this one thing that they decide to put onto the background of, like, the milk bar when they go the Maloco bar.
So the fact that he was smart, the fact that he was very well read and read about things until, like, the extremities and that he incorporates these things in there, I feel that clockwork orange is such a direct example of things that he knew and pieced together. Even Doctor Strangelove. Again, my understanding of the whole moon landing theory and Kubrick being involved with it is that he made such an impression on his work in Doctor Strangelove that the government and basically hit him up, and they were like, how the hell did you know what the inside of this bomber plane looks like? How the hell did you get a guy riding? And, you know, they were impressed by the green screen back then.
And it was just like, damn, this dude put together what really is going on, just on these tiny little scraps of things he saw in magazines and things that he read about. And he was able to figure out exactly what the cockpit looked like. And if. And if he had that kind of ability, he could just read a little report here and there, overhear somebody, especially if he was in these high places. And he can kind of amalgamate exactly what was really going on without you having to tell him, like, you know, the colonel’s secret recipe, he’d be able to guess the other 21 ingredients, right? Right.
Oh, yeah, no, exactly. I know. I really love that story with the cockpit and everything else that this is before he started getting, like, military assistance. Right. With some of these props and everything else. And so him being able to put it together, that’s really, really wild. And he asked for assistance and was denied. So then when they saw what he was able to do with their explicit non help, it was like, holy hell, we better get this guy on the payroll because him just flying solo is dangerous. Like, he. He’ll know what we want to hide from him just by wanting to know it.
Right? Right. Yeah, exactly. And one of the things that, for some reason, this is reminding me of something I picked up the last time I watched 2001 A Space Odyssey, is this reference to a virus? And this was after the pandemic. I was curious. I’m like, is there anything related to this storyline or this script or whatever? In 2001, for some reason, I just had some sort of, like, hunch that there might be something there. And I was really surprised to see that part of the storyline of 2001 is that they introduce the narrative of a virus being found on the moon.
So, like, an ET virus being found on the moon as a cover for the monolith story. And so here in 2001, a Space Odyssey from 1968, where there’s all this talk about AI, that’s the other thing that kind of blows my mind, too, is like him having a whole entire movie about AI and then all of these years later, whether it’s real AI or not, AI is like a thing that everyone’s talking about, and now we’re using, and it’s on our phone and whatnot, that in 2001, they use the virus as a cover for another story.
And I’m like, oh, my goodness. I’m like, that is really, really interesting, too. There’s levels to this stuff. Yeah, there’s multiple levels to all this stuff, for sure. This is actually a perfect segue because you started getting into whether or not we’ve actually been into outer space. So perfect segue into this little segment. Let me play a little audio intro, and then I’ll explain the rules to you. Sure, sure. Hey, conspiracy buffs, I double dare you to take some PCP, the paranormal conspiracy probe. On your marks, get set and go. Simple rules. Really simple. It’s just you’re going to rate some things on a scale of one to ten or zero to ten, whatever you feel like with ten meaning that you give it full credit.
So, for example, if I said human beings have been into outer space, like on a spacecraft, and they went to the moon and there’s human footprints on a moon, which is a. A body outside of the earth, I don’t know how many qualifiers, so that it’s not a metaphorical or astrological sort of thing. This is literally a human being step foot on the moon. Where would you rate that statement? From one to ten? Personally, probably a zero for a minute. So what about flat earth? I think there’s some merits. I’m more of a geocentrist, personally. So I think that basically that we are in the middle of a larger sort of system and all of that, and I think that the earth is stationary.
I think it’s still. I think there’s a universal up and I think there’s a universal down. I think part of the distortion with everything in the modern world is that we’ve been, or a lot of people have been convinced that the world actually spins, but in actuality, it’s the stars that spin above us. So that’s kind of been flipped. I think that’s kind of a big part of this conversation, actually, is what is actually spinning the stars above your head or the ground underneath your feet. So, personally, whether it’s flat or not, that’s less of a thing for me, versus I think that we live on a stationary plane.
How about a local sun or a local moon? That’s interesting. I do think that the sun is closer than we realize. I think the moon is probably closer than we realize. So I would say it’s pretty high up there. So maybe like a seven or something like that. That that’s probably the case when it comes to sun and sun symbolism. The interesting thing to me is that the sun, symbolically, a lot of times when people refer to the sun in, like, ancient scripts or, like, in different types of texts and things like that, sometimes when they’re referencing the sun, they’re actually referencing, like, more of a spiritual sun.
And so it could be called the philosophical sun or something like that. And so I think that the sun is closer. I think the moon is closer, and then I think there might be even something similar to a central sun or something like that. I think sometimes the black sun is kind of referred to this as well. So that there is a sun that moves, that is on the move, but then there’s also a sun that is actually stationary and kind of acts as that point of pivot that I talked about earlier. Do you think that if there’s a local moon, that that actually increases the chances that humans have stepped foot on it? No, I don’t think so.
I don’t. I don’t. I don’t think it’s really probably possible to be able to step on it. So I don’t see it as, like, a physical sort of rock. I think that it’s very illusory, if I’m being completely honest with you. You know, there’s myths where people around the world different. Like, you know, indigenous groups have said that there was a time before the moon. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard that, that. But it’s kind of interesting to sort of think about is that there’s some people who think the moon was brought here. There’s some people who think by Europa, right? Europa brought the moon.
Right. Isn’t that how that goes? I don’t know. Is that. I mean, but that would be right on my. I might be totally butchering that, but I understood that there was a God that actually brought the moon. Like, it wasn’t there before, and they brought it along and they left it there. And that almost conveys, like, a very real cosmological or, like, astrological event where it just kind of pops into existence or enters orbit, if orbit even exists. I don’t know how any of it works. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. So, I mean. Exactly. Well, if that’s the version of the story, that is legitimate.
Yeah, it kind of is. Like, speaking to that. I have a book called who built the moon? And these authors go through all of these different anomalies about the moon. And I’m starting to meet more and more people who are skeptical, really, really skeptical of the moon. And to me, I think that of all of the planets, it’s one of the one that has the most secrets, basically. So the quality of moonlight’s different. I think it’s cool. I encourage anyone. The next time there’s a full moon, step out in full moonlight. Notice how it feels. Notice the temperature just on your skin.
And then go behind a building or go behind a tree or something and be in the shadow of the moonlight, and you will actually literally feel the difference. In the moonlight, it’s cooler. And then when you step into the shadow, it’s actually warmer because the moon’s light is actually cooling. It’s a different quality of light. It’s more of, like, a blue light or something like that. It’s not exactly like the sun. And so there’s all sorts of things with the moon that I’ve gotten into over the years that I’m kind of left, like, shrugging my shoulders, I’m like, I don’t really know what it is.
I don’t know if it should be trusted. But there’s a lot of myths and there’s a lot of folklore of people who do not trust the moon. It’s been like that for, like, a really, really long time. Moon, you’re on notice. Yeah, exactly. What about Bigfoot? If you had a ray Bigfoot on 110, did you already give Bigfoot a score? No, I have not given Bigfoot a score. I’m inclined to give that a ten. I live in Bigfoot country. I haven’t seen Bigfoot myself. So I live in an old area that has a lot of, like, logging history.
And so there’s even a, like, Bigfoot statue, you know, in town. There’s a couple of them actually in town just made out of wood. We have, like, Bigfoot coffee and things like that. It’s definitely, like, a thing around here. And a lot of people, like, part of the history here is that a lot of the loggers were the first ones to see Bigfoot, like, way back in the day because they were actually, like, in the woods and things that, in clearing land. And so there’s all of these different sort of storylines sort of out there. I’ve never met anyone who has seen it, like, really, really clear or anything like that.
But to me, there’s no sort of conflict in my mind that something like that could exist. What if we did a couple other cryptids? What about, like, Mothman? Mothman I’m not so sure about, but I think the storylines behind Mothman are really trippy. You know, really, really interesting. I would like for them to be true, all of these to be true, but I can’t really say. I would say the ones that I’m very convinced on is Bigfoot and Dogman, but it could just be because that’s what I’ve looked into the most. So it seems like Dogman is definitely a thing, apparently.
All right, can you rate one to ten that 911 was an inside job? Oh, yeah. I mean, that definitely a ten. Are there any conspiracy theories that you don’t give credit to? Like, like, popular ones that you’re just like, oh, that one is absolutely false flag. I mean, I can start listing a bunch out if, if you want to just give me, like, pass or fails on some. No. Yeah. I mean, I know there’s definitely stuff I’m not into that I don’t buy, but you might just have to list off and rattle off. Okay. Project monarch, stranger things.
Oh, I’ve never seen stranger things. But, like, monarch mind control, basically. Well, so actually, this is a good place to delineate. So, yeah, let’s start on monarch mind control. Not that it works, but that it actually happened as a government program somewhere on government soil, or maybe it was in South America, but that actual monarch, a la Spritz. Fritz Springmeyer. I don’t know if you’re familiar with his book. You know, it’s actually really funny. I’ve met him multiple times. Yeah, Fritz Springmeyer. I actually, I purchased two or three of his books in person directly from him.
So, quick tangent, you might just be interested in this, but I am Fritz Springmeyer. Nice. Fritz Springmeyer was actually in prison when I found out about it. Him and I was following robbery or something. Yeah, well, it’s a whole entire thing. What I will say is that it seems to me that he was actually framed and that he was actually framed and that there’s a certain temple that maybe actually had a reason to frame him and put him in prison. And so he was actually in prison for a little while. That’s when I came across his words.
His stuff blew my mind. I was like, is this real? Is this not real? He was a local when I moved to Portland, Oregon, and I was following his case, actually. And somehow I found his prisoner, like, id number, and I looked into the database, and I saw that he was actually being released. And I was like, wow, he’s actually being released pretty soon. Shortly thereafter, he announced that he was giving his first presentation post release. And so I went to that presentation. It was just at a local library. And so I got a chance to hang out with him, a bunch of other people that led me to go to this basically, like, conspiracy club for, like, many, many years.
I’m still very, very good friends with a lot of those people. And several years into it, he actually started joining us. And so he started coming around and hanging out and just being one of us, having pizza, drinking beer or stuff like that. And I was like, holy cow, I can’t believe I have the opportunity just to pick this guy’s brain about of this wild stuff. And so I ended up buying several books from him. I ended up, I let him borrow several books, too, along the way. There’s a process church book that I let him borrow because he was kind of interested in some of it.
And there are certain things that I was talking about with it. So I wouldn’t say we’re like, great friends or anything like that, but we’re on a first name basis, at least. He doesn’t live here anymore, and I haven’t talked to him in years, though. Okay, so. So, I mean, I’m going to assume that you’re familiar with the. With Spring Myers, a specific flavor of project monarch. So. Yeah, give me a rating on that from one to ten on how accurate that is. You know, he’s someone where I appreciate the hell out of him. He’s shown me a lot of things.
I’ll say that there are questionable things about his personal history and who he was deprogramming and things like that. And there’s people who have been around him as well that have had similar sort of things to say, but I think that there’s definitely something to it, you know? So I think that there’s. I mean, it’s just. It makes all the sense in the world. Fragmenting people’s minds, putting in different sort of alters, programming them, using symbolism and repetition and things like that to kind of, like, create an undetectable mind control slave. Right? And so, yeah, I mean, I think that’s the real deal.
I think that this is basically kind of, like, ancient psychology, too. I think that this has probably been around for, like, a really, really, really long time. And I think, too, even you don’t have to look that far to see, like, real world examples of how this kind of works, too. You know, when you think about a pimp and how a pimp, like, treats his women and things like that, it’s kind of like a version of, like, mind control. Or you think of what happens to you when you go into the military. They break you down to build you back up and everything else.
It’s like we use these things sort of all the time. So I think that, yeah, there’s something to be said about all of that, but there’s. There’s so many branches with that whole entire world. And with some of his claims, I don’t know how many of them necessarily check out, but as just, like, a broad sort of technique, I guess, like, I can buy it personally, so I would say probably a ten for me. Okay. And then I guess, like, to more and more, um, get into more niche area of this. One of the subsets of Project Monarch was apparently Project Montauk, and this is a long Island Montauk camp hero.
And I guess the claim here was that there was a chair that was developed that you could put what I’ll call an indigo child, for lack of a better word, but these kids that were born with some kind of extra sensory perception or advanced spiritual knowledge, that there was a chair that you could put them in, they used in tandem with something called a delta t antenna, which I believe was created by Preston Nichols, who wrote the theory of music and a whole bunch of other books that basically were the premise of the stranger things as whole.
But I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about that. And then one of the concepts of that eleven and the stranger things, the girl that’s like this indigo child, is so strong astral projection that she could actually see where russian operatives were hiding, or even what they were writing or what they were talking about. You could almost send a spy astrally project into a room and see what your enemies were plotting. Right? Right. I mean, definitely remote viewing is a real phenomenon. So I’m a ten on that for sure. And so I’ve read his name might escape me right now, but I’ve read a few books on remote viewing.
I’ve tried it myself. I used to be part of a group where we used to put targets into an envelope, and then we would basically all try and remote view what the target was. And, I mean, just doing that in and of itself proved that even us, just normal people who are just kind of dicking around, basically can get kind of close or like, right on the money with some of these targets. It was pretty trippy and wild, actually. It was just a group of like five or six of us. But we did this for a couple of different.
We did this for like a couple of years on a number of occasions, pretty much. So remote viewing is definitely a thing for sure. But do they sometimes refer to this chair as a trip chair? I haven’t heard of it as a trip chair. I’m sure you could consider it that I’ve heard it as a God chair as well. The Montauk chair. And. Sorry, please elaborate again. What does this chair do when you sit in it? My understanding, which is loose, because this is conspiracy lore, but that if you had someone that was incredibly capable of astral projection already, like right off the shelf, they can already do it.
Their Michael Jordan astral projection. But you put them in this chair, and the chair is literally wired up. It’s a like a hardware mechanical computer interface device with something called a delta t antenna. And that it basically just amplifies what you’re doing as you actually project. And you can just crank it up to 100 by doing that. And that this kind of follows is where it gets into the Sci-Fi area, that they cranked it up too high when they had an indigo child in the chair, and it opened up a rift into another dimension, which then allowed some demonic sort of Yaldabaoth style creature to enter our reality, and that it’s now causing havoc, and that another version of this was that it created a rift in time, which explains the Philadelphia experiment, and the Philadelphia experiment being where the boat apparently disappeared and then reappeared moments later, but people were fused into the side of it, because when it reappeared into reality, it kind of, like, was offset by a few centimeters or.
I don’t know if you’ve heard that story before, but my understanding is it all, like, it kind of starts with Fritz Springmeyer, weirdly enough, in Project Monarch, which then gives way to Project Montauk and then Project Montauk. Montauk goes haywire and invites these entities from other realms and causes the Philadelphia experiment to all happen retroactively. Because the Philadelphia experiment definitely happened before the camp Montauk was around, but that since it has to do with time, like, a rift in time, that it was the future event in Montauk that caused the past event in Philadelphia to happen.
Gotcha. Right. And weren’t, like, some soldiers or I like Navy men. Like, they were, like, fused into the ship itself. Right, right. Because when it rematerialized, it was off, or, like, the water had drifted or some anomaly happened, and that’s why they got fused into it, because when it rematerialized. So I don’t know. Could you put a number rating on that? Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I think it’s fascinating. And this reminds me of a few different things of, like, what I’ve heard from, like, the super soldier community. I’m not sure how much you’re familiar with all that stuff, but these people who claim that they, on an astral level, are a super soldier, part of a very serious program, and that they go to sleep, and they wake up, and they’re on Mars doing projects, but it feels real, basically.
And then they wake up, and some of them can recall what happened, some of them can’t. And what some of the claims have been from that world is that there is actually a chair that will teleport you to another location. And that, literally, what I heard one time in some experience or sort of interview was that they were put into a chair and that there was a countdown, and that when the countdown was done, they found themselves on a secret base on Mars somewhere, and that it was literally a countdown from 30 seconds. And so it was 30 seconds to Mars.
And that Jared Leto’s band 30 seconds to Mars. Is actually a reference to this trip chair that you. That actually is like a real sort of thing. So with all of that stuff, I would have to say I’m definitely more neutral. So I just give it a five personally, probably where now that I’m thinking about it, like, the conspiracies that I am not interested in or that I’m no longer interested in. A lot of it has to do with, like, the secret space program. People saying that there’s an underground secret space program. And that we have facilities on the moon, we have facilities on Mars and Saturn and things like that.
The best way I’ve heard it put, and I agree with this, that the secret to the secret space program. Is that you can’t actually go to outer space. And so I tend to not buy that side of things anymore. I used to. I used to be very, very interested in all this stuff. I do think that there are super soldiers, though. I think that there are people that have had enhancements and upgrades, grades, you know, and they’re able to do pretty crazy stuff. My understanding is that some of these people, some of their abilities actually come from, like, from trauma based mind control.
That it’s part of the trauma. That some of them, at certain points in their life, were put through very, very specific, detailed kinds of trauma to give them, like, extrasensory perception and make them more psychic and like, you know, have all of these sort of added abilities and things like that. I’m sure you’ve heard of that kind of stuff and know that kind of stuff, right? Yeah. The beta sex kitten programming or the Omega programming or the Delta sauce and. Yeah, there’s all these different versions of it. Right. And I guess inspired by you saying that you kind of lost interest in, like, the secret space program or.
That’s a secret is there is no secret. That’s kind of. There is no space. What about Tartaria, which I kind of feel is like the terrestrial version of a secret space program? Yeah, I think that’s interesting too, for sure. I think there’s something to be said about lost technology and antiquatech and perhaps some sort of reset or whatever. It’s not something that I’m too, too invested in, if I’m being honest with you. And kind of similarly, Atlantis is right there, too, I would say. And that there’s a lot of parallels between atlantean stuff and I like tartarian things.
I would say. I do think humanity has devolved. I think that we are probably in some sort of dark age. I think that it makes sense to me that we have actually lost technology and that we have lost things that made us more complete and whole and maybe even more spiritual and things like that. And so I’m kind of inclined to think that. But I’m really interested in more than tartarian stuff and then more than atlantean stuff. Stuff. I’m really interested in hyperborean stuff. So this idea that humanity has a northern origin and that things perhaps came from the north, which is kind of symbolically like the center in this world, even if you have the sort of mainstream cosmology of the spherical earth and everything else, if you look from the top down, it’s like the North Pole is right there.
I think the poles carry way more secrets than people realize. And so that tends to be more of my trait. Since you mentioned hyperborean, I gotta. I gotta make myself a liar and squeeze one other question in here, too. Go for it. What about Bach saga? Does that include a hyperboreal? I think. I mean, it definitely does. But I would say that my personal opinion is that the box saga is not unlike a lot of other cultures that have a similar sort of idea. Not necessarily what the box saga. Box saga culture exactly looked like and how they did, like, their mating rituals and, like, how they constructed, like, society or whatever.
Wait. What mating rituals? No, I’m just kidding. We don’t have to go into it. Yeah, yeah. And so there’s a whole entire thing there that is interesting to a certain degree. But I think, personally, that they’re just one example of a tradition that was unbroken that has this northern sort of cosmology. But if you go to India as an example, there’s a similar sort of thing where there’s a book called the Arctic Home and the Vedas, and it gets into all of that stuff. So I think a lot of cultures, when you really, really get down to it, a lot of them actually have a northern cosmology.
And I think that if you have a myth that involves a central mountain, it’s like a polar mountain. There’s an author that I’m really, really into right now. His name is Renee Ganon. In my opinion, he’s the best, most comprehensive symbologist, like, of the modern world. So he’s someone that is really, really someone that I look towards with guidance and things like that. I can’t think of another symbologist. And I have a ton of symbolism books. And so it’s taken me years to finally come across his work and really, really dive into it. But he’s kind of of the same opinion that a lot of things in today’s world go back to this central sort of origin, this northern polar kind of story, which some people have referred to as paradise.
Some people have said that the North Pole is where the Garden of Eden is. And this interfaces with all sorts of other stuff about there being a magnetic stone there or a magnetic mountain, sometimes called the Lodestone and things like that. And so kind of like what I was talking about earlier, like the Kaaba cube being like, this center. It’s like all of these pilgrimage locations that have, like, a sacred stone as the center. What Gannon says is that these are secondary locations, that the original original location is hyperborean, the original location is at the north.
And that it seems as though this could just be pure metaphor, which actually I’m okay with, but that it seems as though there was an arctic origin with humanity, and that there was a migration away from the north, symbolically, or perhaps even literally. And I’ve seen this actually play out in the stars as well, in that, in my opinion, the original sky clock was actually in the northern sky. So it was Ursa major and minor going around the polestar. And then what happened was humanity became more solar over time. So one of the things that I’ve tracked with my work is this idea of a polar to solar transfer or a polar to solar switch.
And so it seems as though we kind of live in a very solarized sort of world. So most people believe in a solar system. So this would be heliocentrism. So you’re basically saying that the sun is at the center of everything. But ancient peoples didn’t have the same sort of reverence for the sun. Their reverence was actually with, in my opinion, from. Based on my research, was actually like in the northern sky. So it was the North Star, the pole star, and the constellations that revolved around it. It. And so at a certain time, what happened was, as people became more solar, they started paying more attention to the path of the sun.
So my sort of research has shown me that the original sky clock was in the northern sky, and then it transferred over to the ecliptic. And so this guy named John Major Jenkins, he made a really great case. And according to his research, what he said was that in ancient China, they believed in an eight stationed, eight constellation zodiac around the northern sky. And then when they became more solar, they transferred those constellations over to the path of the sun. And then they introduced four more constellations, giving them twelve zodiac constellations. They’re modern constellations. So I see that in a number of ways, humanity does have some sort of relationship with the northern sky and the North Pole and a lot of the lore that kind of surrounds it.
So that’s more so kind of where I’m at with everything. Hence the hyperborean thing from beyond the north or beyond the north wind. And I like how you were able to bring that full circle back to the standing stone topic that we kind of started out on. So I guess this is the perfect place to start wrapping this up a little bit. Awesome. Where can people find your work? Where should they send their money to? Yeah, so, symbolicstudies.com. i have a Patreon as well. I’m doing an exclusive series on there about the major Arcana. So I’m basically going through the whole entire major Arcana in the tarot, putting out a presentation about each card.
It’s kind of like my sort of deepest research about each card, if people are interested in that. But from symbolicstudies.com, comma, they can find all of my other links to Instagram and Twitter and YouTube and stuff like that. Would you. Is this your magnum opus? Have you done your magnum opus yet? Are you working on one? That’s a great question. I feel like I’m going to be working on my magnum opus here pretty soon. There were things that I thought would kind of be like that, but I have a couple of ideas up my sleeve, so I think I want to write a book sometime pretty soon.
We love books, so, yeah. Get full support. Full support for Mario, symbolicstudies.com, comma, buy his book. If we’re listening to this in the future, go back to it. It. There you go. And, yeah, I mean, I think that we could probably even talk way more about Kubrick. In fact, I’m doing a bunch of live streams on Kubrick movies, so you’re fully invited. I’ll send you some details afterwards, but I would love to do a Kubrick decode with you. And how rude of me. I forgot to even mention another thing that we share in common is our absolute love for Paranoia magazine, which I think raised me as I was just getting out of high school, I think was when I found in, like, Barnes and Noble, and I fell in love immediately.
I was like, this is the thing that I’ve been looking for. And. What. You did a Kubrick cover for Paranoia magazine, right? I did, yeah. So a number of years ago, I used to follow paranoia and actually, interestingly enough, do you know who Ron Patton is? I’d be lying if I said I knew it off the top of my head. Yeah, no worries. I first came across Ron Patton because he wrote a very comprehensive, like, article on MkUltra, mind control and, what, the whole entire history behind it. That was the first time I ever came across his work.
And then I found out that he was affiliated with paranoia. I think he was. He maybe was the founder, and then maybe the ownership transferred over to Olaf Phillips, if I’m not mistaken. But Ron Patton is also the producer of Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis. And that’s a Portland station. That’s a Portland channel, a Portland thing. And so he actually came around to some of those groups as well. So I actually. I thought it was just really interesting, you know, picking up some magazines, reading his article, and then this guy is actually here in person, and I can talk to him about stuff.
But, yeah, they basically put out on their Facebook many, many years ago that they were looking for cover art for a Kubrick episode or a Kubrick release. And just being a Cooper guy, I was like, oh, I’m down. And being a graphic designer, I just volunteered basically my time. And so we put that together, and I sent it your way. So I still really like the way it came out and everything else. But, yeah, paranoia was cool, man. I’m fascinated. You got to kick back beers with the original ogs from Paranoia magazine with Fritz Springmeyer. Did you just, like, grow up with, you know, Jaden Shelby Downard, too, was like, you know, William Cooper, sort of just like your next door neighbor? Like, what other deep conspiracy lore, you know, legends did you grow up with? I mean, I will say the other one that I was very fortunate to meet two or three times and have, like, real conversations.
Don’t you dare say Jordan Maxwell. No, no, no. Tracey twine was the other one. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. And it was all because of Portland, Oregon. I mean, literally. So when I moved to Portland, I knew that there was kind of a. There was just more sort of people out there that were interested in these topics versus where I grew up. And then I realized that there was kind of, like, a UFO community out there that was kind of interesting. I knew that the cryptid sort of scene was a thing. I knew that the magical scene was a thing.
So I’ve been to some interesting conferences. Like, one of the bigger tarot conferences in the country takes place in Portland, Oregon. And so it really exposed me to a lot of interesting people, and I just kind of dove in headfirst when I moved over there, and so I found myself meeting some of these people and things like that. But it was. Yeah, it was awesome just to be able to chat with some of these people in real life. You know, so much of our research, I’m sure you know, this, right, is online, and so you don’t really get a chance to, like, hang with people.
But at the time when I moved in 2008 to, like, 2020, there was, like, definitely more of a thriving sort of scene with people who were interested in this kind of stuff. All right, yeah, well, we’re definitely gonna have to figure something out. I’ll have to get you on a show with me and Nate from reality czars, who’s also grew up around the Portland area, at least. So we got a lot to cover. Sounds good, man. Awesome. I had a great tying for the invite. Spread the word with propaganda packs, all for just $40 shipped@paranoidamerican.com. paranoid propaganda packs we got facts on these speaker slaps, so grab yourself a stack and go attack with these paranoid propaganda packs.
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You’re despising me for what though? Calculated it rather cutthroat paranoid American must be all the blood smoke for real? Lord, give me your day, you away vacate they wait around to hate whatever they say, man, it’s not in the least bit we get heavy, rotate when a beat hits a thing because you well, fucking niggas for real you’re welcome they never had a deal you’re welcome, man. They lack in a pill, you’re welcome yet they doing it still you’re welcome.
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